3D measurement of objects is well known and finds use in many applications in industry for example.
By way of general background, the following publications disclose measurement systems.
US 2008/192263 (EP 1711777) discloses a method for determining the position of an object in space, in which measurement characteristics of the object are recorded with an optical recording device calibrated to a space coordinate system, and on the basis of these measurement characteristics, the position of the object in the space coordinate system is determined in an image processing device. To enable reliable ascertainment of the position even with only a few recording devices, it is provided that at least two measurement characteristics of the object are detected simultaneously in a recording device and used to determine the position of the object.
US 2004/196451 (JP 4077755) discloses a method for measuring a position of an object according to an image of the object captured by a camera unit. The method includes the following steps: calculating a discrepancy of an incident beam of light penetrating a lens system of the camera unit relative to an optical center of the lens system, and compensating the position of the object according to the discrepancy.
US 2002/100884 discloses an optical method for determining the spatial coordinates of a surface, comprising scanning the surface with an incident beam of light from a scanner head, determining the range to the surface at a plurality of points on the surface relative to the scanner head by a means of a return beam reflected from the surface, determining the relative spatial location and orientation of the scanner head at the time of scanning each of said plurality of surface points by a remote optical sensing system that includes a plurality of positioning sensors each located at a different known location relative to the other positioning sensors and a plurality of markers attached to the scanner head, with each marker at a at different location relative to the other markers. The colors of a target surface may be measured together with the surface spatial coordinates by an optical method comprising the scanning of the surface with an incident beam of laser light from an optical parametric oscillator tuned so that the beam contains at least one well defined wavelength, determining the spatial coordinates of the surface at a plurality of points by means of a return beam reflected from the surface, measuring the intensity of the reflected laser light at each of said points on the surface, tuning the optical parametric oscillator to a plurality of different discrete wavelengths and repeating the measurements of surface spatial coordinates and reflectance intensities for each of these new wavelengths, and combining the reflectance intensities measured at these different wavelengths at each surface point into a multi-channel composite that expresses the coloration of the surface.